Tony Rose sang Clerk Saunders unaccompanied
in 1982 on his Dingle's album
Poor Fellows.
He noted:

One of the classic “big” ballads based of family honour or
jealousy. I've collated the text from several sources. Of all songs, the
ballads are the most challenging, and therefore the most rewarding to sing.

This beautiful song tells its own story, and also contains some good
advice on how to talk yourself out of a hole; the only problem arising if
you don't get a chance to because both you and the evidence are fast
asleep. The Child Collection has all of the different versions.

In most of the tragic ballads the heroine chooses suicide however in this
case she chooses rigorous mourning. Alison draws on Child's
A & D texts. It is set to the handsome tune in
Motherwell's Appendix (No 16)—see Bronson.
She was inspired to create her way of it from the fine singing of
Rod Paterson.

Malinky sang Clerk Saunders
in 2005 on their Greentrax CD
The Unseen Hours.
They noted:

Clerk Saunders fell victim to brotherly jealousy, a common ballad motif.
This tale ends in abject tragedy when one of the brothers takes his sword to
Clerk Saunders and his lover is left grief stricken. Fiona [Hunter] learned
this from the singing of Alison McMorland. The ballad was also in the
repertoire of Mrs Arrott of ‘Aberbrothick’ (Steve [Byrne]'s
home town of Arbroath); she is still a relatively unknown informant who
contributed many ballads to the late 18th century collector
Robert Jamieson.

There are four of the so-called. Child Ballads here, that is ballads
recorded and numbered by the American scholar, Francis James Child in his work
The English and Scottish Popular Ballads.
I’ve been fortunate enough to learn a great deal in the process of teaching.
Being someone who tends to plough through life on feeling and instinct,
it is instructive to be asked to examine one’s work and explain it.
While living in California I had a student, Rose McLeod, who would simply bring
me songs and ask me to interpret them for her. Rose brought me a recording of
Polly Bolton singing Clerk Sanders. I was very familiar with
June Tabor’s version of the song and was delighted to work on this different
and beautiful form of the ballad. The song never left me alone over ten years
and I would play it and sing scraps of the story. Eventually I used
Roy Bailey’s performance, which is based on the text of the song collection
Marrowbones
and called June Tabor to remind me of the verses she had sung to conclude her
text. This is yet another of the great ballads where class difference is the
excuse for brutal violence, although it is not always clear in the lyric.
Ironically, in some versions, May Margaret explains, whilst cursing her
brothers, that the late Clerk was in fact the heir to an Earldom.